3D Petrie Museum — The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology has one of the largest ancient Egyptian and Sudanese collections in the world and they’ve put 3D models of their goods online. Not (yet) available for download, only viewing which seem a bug.

Sandy Pentland on Wearables (The Verge) — Pentland was also Nathan Eagle’s graduate advisor, and behind the Reality Mining work at MIT. Check out his sociometer: One study revealed that the sociometer helps discern when someone is bluffing at poker roughly 70 percent of the time; another found that a wearer can determine who will win a negotiation within the first five minutes with 87 percent accuracy; yet another concluded that one can accurately predict the success of a speed date before the participants do.

The Virtuous Pipeline of Code (Public Resource) — Chicago partnering with Public Resource to open its legal codes for good. “This is great! What can we do to help?” Bravo Chicago, and everyone else—take note!

Smithsonian’s 3D Data — models of 21 objects, from a gunboat to the Wright Brothers’ plane, to a wooly mammoth skeleton, to Lincoln’s life masks. I wasn’t able to find a rights statement on the site which explicitly governed the 3D models. (via Smithsonian Magazine)

Anki’s Robot Cars (Xconomy) — The common characteristics of these future products, in Sofman’s mind: “Relatively simple and elegant hardware; incredibly complicated software; and Web and wireless connectivity to be able to continually expand the experience over time.” (via Slashdot)

An Empirical Evaluation of TCP Performance in Online Games — We show that because TCP was originally designed for unidirectional and network-limited bulk data transfers, it cannot adapt well to MMORPG traffic. In particular, the window-based congestion control and the fast retransmit algorithm for loss recovery are ineffective. Furthermore, TCP is overkill, as not every game packet needs to be transmitted in a reliably and orderly manner. We also show that the degraded network performance did impact users’ willingness to continue a game.

Dynamic Shape Display (MIT) — a Dynamic Shape Display that can render 3D content physically, so users can interact with digital information in a tangible way. inFORM can also interact with the physical world around it, for example moving objects on the table’s surface. (via Fast Company)

Unhappy Truckers and Other Algorithmic Problems — Even the insides of vans are subjected to a kind of routing algorithm; the next time you get a package, look for a three-letter letter code, like “RDL.” That means “rear door left,” and it is so the driver has to take as few steps as possible to locate the package. (via Sam Minnee)

Fuel3D: A Sub-$1000 3D Scanner (Kickstarter) — a point-and-shoot 3D imaging system that captures extremely high resolution mesh and color information of objects. Fuel3D is the world’s first 3D scanner to combine pre-calibrated stereo cameras with photometric imaging to capture and process files in seconds.

Hacking for Humanity) (The Economist) — Getting PhDs and data specialists to donate their skills to charities is the idea behind the event’s organizer, DataKind UK, an offshoot of the American nonprofit group.

Mozilla Payments, Firefox Cleans Cookies, Lost: One Web Please Return to Those Who Love It, and 3D from Spaaaaace

mozpay — a JavaScript API inspired by google.payments.inapp.buy() but modified for things like multiple payment providers and carrier billing. When a web app invokes navigator.mozPay() in Firefox OS, the device shows a secure window with a concise UI. After authenticating, the user can easily charge the payment to her mobile carrier bill or credit card. When completed, the app delivers the product. Repeat purchases are quick and easy.

3D From Space Shuttle Footage? — neat idea! Filming in 3D generally requires two cameras that are separated laterally, to create the parallax effected needed for stereoscopic vision. Fortunately, videos shot from Earth orbit can be converted to 3D without a second camera, because the camera is constantly in motion.

At its best, 3D printing can make us more human by making us whole.

Tim O’Reilly recently asked me and some other colleagues which technology seems most like magic to us. There was a thoughtful pause as we each considered the amazing innovations we read about and interact with every day.

My reasons are different than you might think. Yes, it’s amazing that, with very little skill, we can manufacture complex objects in our homes and workshops that are made from things like plastic or wood or chocolate or even titanium. This seems an amazing act of conjuring that, just a short time ago, would have been difficult to imagine outside of the “Star Trek” set.

But the thing that makes 3D printing really special is the magic it allows us to perform: the technology is capable of making us more human. Read more…

Hacking Pacemakers For Death — IOActive researcher Barnaby Jack has reverse-engineered a pacemaker transmitter to make it possible to deliver deadly electric shocks to pacemakers within 30 feet and rewrite their firmware.

Print Your Own 3D Parts (Wired) — Teenage Engineering, makers of a popular synthesizer known as the OP-1, posted the 3-D design files of various components on digital object repository Shapeways, and is instructing 3-D printer-equipped users to print them out instead of buying them.

Legacy Media Demanding Surveillance In ISPs — music rights groups including the Recording Industry Association of Japan say they have developed a system capable of automatically detecting unauthorized music uploads before they even hit the Internet. But to do that they need to be able to spy on Internet users’ connections and compare data being transferred with digital fingerprints held in an external database. That can only be achieved with the assistance of Internet service providers who would be asked to integrate the system deeply into their networks. It’s Japan for now …

Sensors for Industrial Espionage (NPR) — Genscape also places electromagnetic monitors beneath the power lines running into the Cushing tank farms to measure their power usage. This gives them an idea of how much oil is being pumped into and out of Cushing.

Tilt — clever Firefox plugin that lets you view the DOM on your page in 3D. Excellent for visually understanding the structure and layout of your page. I can’t wait to see the applications of this in debugging and teaching.

Learnings from the Long View (PDF) — scenario planning lessons learned from the founder of the field. Most of the scenarios they talk about are near and dear to the O’Reilly heart: smart networks, augmented reality, synthetic biology, energy from bacteria, super macro- and micro-manufacturing. (via Rob Passarella)